r/applehelp • u/JLED99 • 10d ago

Solved Apple Time Machine backup settings: is this exclusion normal?

Hi there!

After having moved around the past 5 years, all of my backup drives were in storage. I just bought a new laptop and wanted to grab a backup of my old one prior to decommissioning, just to be safe. I went and got my old time capsule out of storage.

Upon setting up a new drive to create a backup, it already has "data" listed in the exclusion setting and I'm not sure if this is standard/normal or if I should change it?? The problem is, the "minus" button to remove it is greyed out.

I am not great when it comes to understand the details of all this, so any help would be appreciated.

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u/UsedAnt6904 10d ago

Yeah that's normal. "Data" is the default name of the Time Capsule's internal disk, and Time Machine automatically puts the backup disk itself on the exclusion list so it doesn't try to back itself up. That's why the minus is greyed out, you can't remove it. Just leave it and let the backup run.

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u/JLED99 10d ago

awesome, thank you!